M.I.A. Page 2

But the days slipped by, and life continued. It wasn’t that she forgot about Kyle, it was just that she knew that he would be all right, or he wouldn’t. One or the other. Right now, there was pretty much no way for her to see or even talk to him. The duty that he had been assigned required a great amount of secrecy, so there were no letters, and she couldn’t even so much as hear his voice on the phone. But then the mission kicked off and many units were involved. It was all over the news. Late into the night Jane would sit and watch the television, just hoping for a glimpse of Kyle, but it never came. Instead what came were images of war that she wasn’t ready to see. And when she got on the internet the images were worse. The destruction just wasn’t something she was used to seeing, and she had a hard time dealing with it.

  At first, she didn’t feel like she had anyone she could talk to. But then she remembered that Brian had said to call him if she needed anything. So, one night, up late worrying about Kyle, she dialed his number. And they talked for a long time. Not about the war with ISIS, or about Kyle, but about anything and everything in order to take her mind off of what was hurting her heart. At first, they talked about the weather, how it was unseasonably cold and it would probably make for a hard winter. Then they talked about politics, how no one in congress had any idea what was going on, then about the economy and how the minimum wage needed to be raised substantially if anyone wanted to have a chance. But eventually they did find their way to Kyle. Brian was Kyle’s older brother and had served in the Marines in Iraq years before. He had been part of the invasion that had been so successful in its blitz of Baghdad. Jane asked some hard questions, and Brian took his time to answer.

  “I’m not sure what to make of it either, Jane,” Brian said. “I mean, the whole thing needed to be fixed, but honestly I’m not sure if this was the right way. If we don’t build schools and hospitals along with our military efforts, how in the world can we expect the fundamentalism to lose its grip there? It’s like we actually plan on trying to kill terrorism with bullets. Which does sound like a pretty decent plan at first, because bullets do a really good job of killing things. But what it doesn’t take into account is that ideas can’t be killed by bullets. And no matter how many people we kill in an effort to eradicate an idea, that isn’t how it works. I mean, I’m not saying anything radical here, this is stuff that anyone would say on the street who has been paying attention.”

  “Then why was Kyle so ready to go?” Jane asked. “Why did he want to go over so badly.”

  Brian sighed, and Jane could envision him shaking his head on the other end of the phone.

  “Kyle and I grew up in a military family. We were taught to believe in things that we couldn’t see, like God, patriotism, and other stuff like that. So, we both felt like we needed to answer the call. For a while he held out, and when he joined the Guard I initially thought that it would be enough for him. When I was active duty in the Marine Corps life was so fast paced. But all the downtime between deployments really takes the luster out of everything. So maybe Kyle did do the right thing by joining the Guard. I’m not sure.”

  For a few seconds, there was silence on the phone. Jane wondered what Brian was getting at, or going to get at. Then he spoke again.

  “You know, I’m not sure why he wanted to go over so badly,” Brian said. “Because I didn’t have nice things to say about the war when I got back. But maybe that’s just the way it goes for a lot of people, you know? There isn’t any way to tell them not to do something, you just have to let them do it and make their own mistakes. Maybe that’s a cop out, maybe it’s just me letting Kyle off the hook easy, because he stayed a long time waiting to get sent over. Made it all the way to Platoon Sergeant. Which is a pretty big deal, but at the end of the day the reasons for him going over remain his reasons, and I’m not really privy to them at all.”

  Jane started pacing around the empty house as she spoke to Brian. Whenever she got worked up she paced; she’d read somewhere it was because the human brain looked for a face to go with the conversation it was having, but she didn’t know if she bought that.

  “Well, didn’t you speak about it?” she said to Brian. “Didn’t you two at least talk about why he was joining up. I can’t imagine you didn’t at least give him your two cents and then he fired back with his, right? Or something like that? I just don’t understand why this is such a big deal to tell me? I know you know! Just tell me!”

  The line went quiet for a second and Jane sat back down and started to cry. She hung up right when Brian started to answer. She cried and cried. Eventually there was a knock on her door and it was Brian. She opened the door and as he stepped inside Jane flung herself into his arms and cried. The heavy sobs racked her body, and snot ran down her face. She looked like a mess, but Brian didn’t care. He held her for a long time, then gave her a nod and left. The next day, Jane woke up groggy and wondered if it had happened at all. But she knew deep down that she was lucky that Brian was in their lives, someone that knew what was going on, had been there, and understood when it was time to speak and when it was time to stand silent.

  Chapter 4

  The next few weeks Jane did her best to stay busy so that none of it entered her mind. Her job as a dental hygienist helped, her office was extremely busy. There were so many people that needed work done on their teeth. She cleaned and cleaned and cleaned teeth until she dreamed about them, until it was the only thought in her mind. One day she came into work early and her boss was waiting for her. It was strange to see him around the office outside of business hours.

  “Hey, Jim,” Jane said. “What bring you to the job so early today?”

  Jim shifted in his chair, then stood up, as if what he was about to say was something he’d rehearsed. When he squared his shoulders to look at her she realized that was exactly what was going on.

  “Jane,” he began. “I need you to take some time off. And yes, I know it’ll make things harder for us around here at the office, but what you’re doing to yourself right now, I can’t allow it. I just want you to think about how much time you’ve put into the office over the last few weeks.”

  Jane stood in her coat, her purse over her shoulder, not knowing what to say.

  “Jane,” he continued. “Some of the days you’ve been working have been fifteen hour days. For six days a week. And then you come in on the other day to clean the office. We have a cleaning lady for that!”

  Jim started to pace the room but stopped himself. Jane could tell this was really hard for him. Jim was usually a really calm and quiet guy, not someone that she ever saw get worked up about anything at all. But now he was worked up, but not in the angry way. Not like that at all. He reminded her of a little kid up in front of the class getting ready for the big speech—to be more precise, in the middle of the big speech. He froze in place for a second and mopped his face off with his hand, reminding Jane of her long dead father when he used to take her and her mother out to the log cabin in the woods and chop wood for the furnace.

  “Listen,” Jim spoke softly, so that she had to come close to hear him. “I’ll pay you. All right? It’ll be like paid vacation except that it won’t count against the total tally or anything like that. I’ve already got it in writing with my silent partner, the one who walked in on you cleaning the ceiling tiles last weekend. We both know you’re going through a hard time, and we aren’t pretending to know what it’s like to go through something like this. But we also both know that we have a duty to you, and to our business, to make sure that you take care of yourself.”

  “What do you mean?” Jane asked, her voice cracking.

  Tears stung her eyes, and she turned her face away.

  “I mean that you can’t come back here for a month,” Jim said. “But it’s all good, you’ll get paid! I want you to forget about this place. I want you to go somewhere and forget about the war. What our government has done is out of your hands, out of my hands, and I’m not going to let it eat you alive in front of me.”

  �
�You don’t understand,” Jane said. And she started to say something else but Jim cut her off.

  “No, YOU don’t understand!” Jim shouted. “I watched the Vietnam war eat my mother alive. And you know what? My dad never came back home. Now I’m not saying that’s what’s going to happen to Kyle. I think Kyle is going to come home safe and sound. But what I am saying is that I’m not going to let this thing take you under like some fucking existential shark. Not on my fucking watch, and not at my fucking business!”

  Jim stood panting, weaving back and forth like he was drunk. Jane took a step back. She’d never seen him like this before. It was almost like he’d gone crazy. But she knew that he hadn’t, that he was just putting his foot down.

  “So, here’s the deal,” he said. “You take the month off. Hell, take two. And I want you to go for long walks. Go hiking in the mountains. Take up trout fishing or something. Hell, become a UFC fighter, I don’t care.”

  Jim walked over to her and put his hands on her shoulders.

  “Just know, we are all rooting for you and Kyle here, and that we love you. That’s why I’m doing this. I can’t watch this anymore,” he said. “So, go.”

  Jane left in a daze, and wondered if she was dreaming again. But there was no way she could dream something that odd and vivid. It was just beyond her imagination. As she pulled out of the parking lot she wondered if this would be it for her at this job. Sure, she’d do the whole paid vacation thing, but after a talk like that it would be hard to come back and work here every day. Not because Jim didn’t care, but because he did care. If everyone that worked there had just kept their mouths shut and their ideas to themselves, it would have been easy to keep racking up the hours. And it’s not like it affected them at all, it’s not like she wasn’t salaried and she was playing a game to get a bunch of overtime. She just needed time to herself away from the house and since she didn’t really have a lot of friends it was hard to go out for a drink, or to the movies.

  When she got home she collapsed on the couch. Jane promised herself that she wouldn’t cry, promised herself that she’d pull it all together and everything would be all right. But she also knew that sometimes she promised things that couldn’t be done. So, the tears stung her eyes again, but this time they didn’t abate. This time they rushed down her cheeks in torrents. And when she thought she couldn’t cry anymore, she did. But this time it felt like her entire soul was rushing out of her. Finally, she slept. Or maybe passed out is more true to what happened.

  Chapter 5

  When Jane woke, she wasn’t sure what to do with herself. For her first day of complete freedom she cleaned the whole entire house. That went quickly, so she decided to organize everything in the closet. That went quickly as well. The whole time she was cleaning and organizing she wasn’t able to get the mental image of Kyle out of her brain. She wasn’t sure how she was going to shake him. He was like a ghost that wasn’t dead, like a living aberration. As Jane cleaned, she thought that maybe she should get really drunk, or maybe she should call up the kid down the street to see if he could score her some pot. Maybe getting really high would make it all go away. After she was done cleaning she got up and called Brian.

  “You want to do what?” Brian said.

  “Oh, don’t be such a goody goody,” Jane said. “I want that kid down the street to score me a bag of weed.”

  “No fucking way,” Brian replied. “That has to be the worst idea I’ve ever heard.”

  “You’ve never smoked pot, have you,” Jane replied.

  “No, of course not,” Brian said. “But I’m not so sure what that has to do with anything at all! Any rational adult will tell you that your idea of scoring bud off some dumb kid who might roll over on you if he gets caught is a super bad idea. Even though weed is barely illegal in this state, it’s still against the law. And even though you probably wouldn’t even have to go to jail, they’d still put it on your record and that might fuck with your job.”

  “I haven’t told you yet,” Jane said. “But my job said that I’m on vacation, paid vacation, until my boss says otherwise. He says I was putting in too many hours at the workplace.”

  The phone went quiet.

  “What?” Brian asked.

  “I was there too much,” Jane said. “Jim, my boss, was right about that. I was putting in long days, working as much as I could.”

  “Wow,” Brian said. “Hey, I’m just going to come over so we can talk about this more in person, all right?”

  “Sure!” Jane said. “But why aren’t you at work? I guess I should have thought of that before I called you.”

  “I’m doing hazardous material cleanup jobs, so it kind of depends on the workload.”

  “Oh,” Jane said. “Well, I’ll see you when you get here!”

  Jane was excited that Brian was coming over. It was going to be nice to have someone to talk to. Since Kyle had left, the house had been so empty and lonely. But when Brian arrived there was someone there with him standing on the front stoop and Brian looked like he’d just run over someone’s dog.

  “What’s going on?” Jane asked. “Is everything alright?”

  Brian just looked down at his toes, his hand stuffed deep in his pockets, his face emotionless. The other guy, a husky guy with a military haircut, and, now that she noticed it, wearing a military uniform, looked like he wanted to run.

  “Ma’am,” he said. “I’ve got some bad news.”

  Jane staggered away from the door clutching her hand to her chest, as if trying to keep her heart from beating out of her rib cage.

  “No,” she said. “No, no, no, no, no!”

  But that didn’t stop the man from telling her that Kyle had most likely perished. That the convoy he had been in had taken heavy rocket fire from an unknown position, and then fundamentalist rebels had attacked them on foot and taken many prisoners. The more the man walked into the house while he spoke, the more Jane backed up, until she fell onto the couch.

  Here I am again, on the couch. Going to cry on it twice in one day.

  After the man left it was just her and Brian. He sat in one of the plush chairs across from the couch and put his feet up on the coffee table. Jane looked at him, her lips trembling, trying to contain herself.

  “Listen,” Brian said. “I talked to the guy before you opened the door. We’ve been out there for a while. At first, he didn’t want to give me the details, but I really put his feet to the fire about it. Got in his face and pulled the Marine card. Basically, no one knows what has happened.”

  Jane sat up on the couch.

  “Wait, what are you saying? Are you telling me that he could be alive?”

  “Yes,” Brian said. “That’s what I’m telling you.”

  Jane looked hard at Brian, then slumped back onto the couch.

  “So, what aren’t you telling me.”

  “Nothing,” Brian said. “Listen, I know this is hard to understand, but there is a really, really good chance that Kyle isn’t alive anymore. I know that I just said that he could be alive, and that’s because he could be alive. That much is certain. But what is very uncertain is if he actually is alive. He could have died in the huge rocket attack that happened before they blew the IEDs on the convoy, or he could have died in the ensuing firefight. It’s important to keep in mind that while Kyle very well could be alive, the chances of that are slim to none.”

  Jane’s whole body sagged. She put her elbows on her knees like she was going to be sick. Jane felt sick, but not sick to her stomach. It was more of a soul sickness, like an eternal weariness rubbing against the inside of her ribs. Like she had soaked up so much sadness and grief already that she just couldn’t do it anymore. It was like she had reached the end. And maybe it would have been the end for her, had Brian not been there.

  “Hey!” he shouted, then leaned forward to slap his hand down on the coffee table a few times in rapid succession. “Hey! Look at me! You’re fine! No matter what, you’re going to be all right! I know this
sounds like some bullshit positive thinking thing in a time like this, but you’ve got to believe me. Life goes on. Kyle would want you to go on with your life, not just sit around and mope.”

  Jane was so shocked she didn’t know what to say, so she just slumped back on the couch. Brian excused himself, apologizing as he left. He closed the door behind him, and Jane stayed on the couch for the rest of the day, and long into the night.

  Chapter 6

  In the coming months, Jane and Brian became close friends. For Jane, Brian was like someone she already knew because he was so much like Kyle in certain ways. But where he was different, he was so different, that it was unfair to compare the two at all. She let Kyle be Kyle, maybe alive, but far more than likely dead in Iraq; she let Brian be Brian, a good friend to her and someone she could depend on. They spent more and more time together, until they were having “sleepovers” where one would come to the other’s house and stay the night. It helped with her loneliness.

  As the winter turned to spring and the ice began to melt, Jane felt the urge to escape and relax and for some reason the first thing that came to her mind was weed. She had mentioned using it as a coping mechanism to Brian and he had rejected the idea completely and totally. However, today on the way home from work she saw the neighborhood kid who always had a hazy and skunky smell about him. Jane felt an impulse so strange and foreign to her as she pulled over by the scruffy kid as he rolled down the sidewalk on his skateboard.

  “Hey, Seth,” Jane shouted. “Could I buy a bag off of you!?”

  Seth hopped off his skateboard and ran over to the car.

  “Yo, what the fuck are you yelling that shit out of the window of your car in front of God and everyone for?” Seth seethed under his breath. “Don’t you know that weed is still illegal? Why the fuck would you yell that? And we’re right by my fucking house, man!”

  “Whoa, Seth,” Jane said. “You’re really, what do you kids say, harshing my vibe.”